In a message dated 05/05/2005 12:48:31 PM Eastern Standard Time, scott at cjhunter.com writes: Wow, that is really slick. My hat's off to you. I thought I was doing good when I caught Tazendra channeling Sherlock Holmes, but I never would have caught this Easter Egg at all. The funny thing is that I was just thinking, on my way into work, about starting up a "compiled easter egg" thread. Bantam's logo is a cock/rooster, so that is possible if the Phent = pheasant connection works. I think the clue in this one is the street address. None of the others list an address at all. "14 Fishmonger Street" sounds like a play on words. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find an online directory that lists physical addresses for the big publishers. Even their own websites seem to avoid mentioning much in the way of actual contact information. If we assume that the opinions of Sticks mirror the opinions of actual writers then we could look at which houses have published Steve's friends like Megan Lindholm, Emma Bull, and Roger Zelazney. Steve hasn't, to my knowledge, ever published anything with Del Rey, for instance, so the opinion expressed by Sticks would be one he heard from other writers who HAVE worked with them. One thing I'd consider is that the three that are properly identified all have the name recognizably altered. That is, there's a contraction, an alternate phonetic spelling and an acronym but the actual name is there in the story. That might argue against Phent and Greenbough being some sort of substitution where the name is symbolic of an entirely different word. Personally, I've always pronounced "bough" to rhyme with "Ow!", like "Ow, that hurts!". ("A loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse and Thou...") That doesn't totally preclude the bow and arrow line of inquiry but it suggests that it could be the wrong tack. Interesting puzzle, at any rate. Maybe green bough is laurel leaf. ??? I wish I could remember where I saw this discussion before. It may have been before the list, or an on-topic discussion on the list a few years ago. I do remember that it was never resolved then. This is the type of discussion that list geeks(like me) love and that Steve thirves on. John D. Barbato, OD